By Ed Muldoon

GolfWRX Contributor

“Tom, it’s your mom, I am calling to tell you that your Grandmother has passed, I’m sorry hon.”

It’s early February and the ringing of his cell phone had shaken Tom Haverton to a groggy state of consciousness.  Fumbling with the device his first thoughts were of work and what must be an inescapable reason of coming in on his day off.  In short, he was unhappy.  The sheets had tangled and the first peaking lights of dawn drifted through a gap in the drapes.

“What?”

“I’m sorry honey.  She died peacefully in her sleep.”

Tom slowly lowered the phone and turned to his wife letting the news rush out, like a punctured tire it left him deflated and cold.

Tom’s grandmother was a woman of substantial meaning in his life.  For long periods of time in his childhood she was a caregiver, with two working parents she had acted as a third.  She had opened her home to him and his brother completely and without reserve.  It was his home away from home, and the foundation of many of his favorite childhood memories.  The loss, for him, was considerable.

Tom considered what to do, the funeral preparations are still mostly in the air, and he had been assured that his immediate presence is not required.  After he kissed his wife off to work, Tom sat pensively in the house.

“I was literally at a loss as to what I could do,” recalled Tom. “The news wasn’t completely unexpected, she was sick and eighty-nine, but that does little to soften the blow so to speak.  So I did what I always do during times of stress, I went to the golf course.”

Tom was a lifelong golfer, at a young age his parents had bought him his first set of clubs and he’d been in love since.  Like many men and women passionate about the sport, Tom had spent the majority of his affair with golf on the losing side.  If golf was a fickle mistress, Tom had only seen her less forgiving side.  He chose to go to the golf course that day because it seemed like the right thing to do for him.

“I didn’t tell anyone, because I didn’t think anyone would understand.”

Tom was sure that his decision might seem callous to some, but to him the golf course was an old friend, someone he could lean on.  He could whisper his problems, and the course would understand.  It wouldn’t judge or probe, it wouldn’t console or sympathize, it would let Tom work it out.

“I’m not an overly religious person,” Tom said. “I grew up attending church, but as I got older and moved farther from my family I attended less and less, but if I could call any place somewhere I felt close to God, it would be at a golf course.”

Tom played golf three times that week: once after hearing about his Grandmother’s passing, once the day before her funeral, and once the day after.  Tom professed that golf helped to center him.

“The second time I played golf that week, I played the back nine alone,” he said. “I spent most of that time thinking of Grandma.  My golf game went on autopilot, and I just enjoyed recalling my memories of her.  At one point I looked out across the seventeenth hole, the sun had peaked over the valley and there wasn’t another golfer in sight.  It was a perfect moment, and it felt like she was there.”

Though he grieved her loss greatly, Tom confessed that golf acted as a bulwark.  He used those 54 holes, walking alone, to sort through his jumbled feelings.  He came to terms with his loss, prayed for his Grandmother, and started to move on.  It was moments like on the seventeenth that made the transition into a life without his grandmother a little easier.

“In the passing moments of day to day life, sometimes the grief would seem overwhelming,” he said. “It was surprising, and always caught me off guard.  When I was on the course though, for those four hours, I was centered and calm.”

Each person grieves in his or her own way, and for Tom it was on the course.  Tom hasn’t asked for understanding, but he was confident for those who have lived the game of golf like he has will nod their heads knowingly.  For some golf is more than a game, it is a passion, and for Tom it was a way to move on.

Author’s Note: Tom asked that his name be made anonymous for the privacy of his family.

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